Sponsored posts against Google guidelines?
-
I'm a bit confused. Every blog I try to outreach on always give me a quote for a sponsored post. Isn't this against Google guidelines because you paying for a link technically even though your paying for a post?
Do you guys buy sponsored posts?
Should this be avoided?
How do you outreach to a blog that offers sponsored posts? They can smell that you want a link from a mile away and give you a nice fat quote.
-
Point well made.
-
I might have used a bad example with Rand, but it is amazing how many companies take paid posts or reviews. Places like Allure, Vogue, Huff Post, NY Times, ect. What you are really hitting is the demographic that thinks they are reading something that is impartial, but in reality they are just being advertised to under the guise of "News". I always make sure the link is nofollow, so I do not really consider it blackhat, be shakey marketing, maybe. But in the end it comes down to dollars and cents. I regularly have posts that are paid in the 500-1000usd range. When you first do it, it is a leap, because there is no SEO value at all. But the largest return I have had was a post that in 3 days grossed 50k in sales on high margin products. The posts usually die fast, because people want the latest greatest thing. But they end up getting shared and work for the most part generally.
-
When it comes to domains that feature sponsored posts (aka paid guest posts), I think there is a lot of FUD out there and the domains selling sponsored space are capitalizing on that. There is also a fundamental difference between the value of Rand posting a single WBF post on Moz (that promoted a product), Rand posting the same single WBF post on another domain, and, for example the value of Moz, as a domain/brand regularly posting content it received money for from other parties.
I think the difference is in the measurable quality of the audience. Ongoing sponsored content:
- Lowers the current quality of the audience (why would an expert spend time reading paid-for content--unless it is of the most high quality--when the expert could spend time reading more virtuous--and usually better--content somewhere else? ), which is to say that it plays into lower rankings for the content/domain.
- Is a downward spiral. If Rand were to post a single WBF that promoted a product, it would likely be a very effective promotional tool for the product and would have little impact on people's perception of Moz. But if every WBF promoted a product, such would decrease the value of WBF and the worth of the promotions themselves. And if Moz were to regularly post sponsored posts/advertisements, in the long run the quality and value perceived in the brand/domain would suffer greatly and such would be indicated by its membership numbers and its rankings.
All of that's to say that best case scenario, I see sponsored posts being of dubious short-term value and of even less value in the long term.
-
Good answer. If there is a marketing benefit then it is worth doing. If you are doing it purely for SEO then you are buying links and take the risks that come with that.
If the sites you are contacting are asking you for money for followed links then you are probably not the first so it's a risky path you are walking down.
-
Generally it is against Google's guidelines if you are buying a do follow link. So in doing something like this you need to weigh the SEO vs Marketing value. I personally do it with a lot of my clients, but not for SEO purposes, it is for marketing / sales purposes. My clients are generally e-commerce sites for a little insight. See some markets have blogs that people read every time it is posted. Kind of like a Rand Fishkin article in our market. If Rand came out tomorrow witha whiteboard friday and said this product is great, it boosted Moz's organic SEO by 100% think how many people would flock to buy it. Most of the time since paid links should be no follow, there is no SEO benefit, but at the end of the day if it puts more money in yours or your clients pocket than was spent, then it is worth it. I will say that I buy links, I make sure they are not followed and I buy them when I think they can create sales for my clients. As far as I know that model fits in the Google guidelines because buy making sure they are not followed I am not buying them for SEO purposes.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Backlinks from The Sun, New Yor Post, etc...
Hello there, Some of my competitors have backlinks from very well-known newspaper websites like New York Post or The Sun. And it is really obvious that their backlinks are paid ones. On these news websites, they don't talk about ghost writing stuff or "partnership" for backlinks. They only write about banner advertising. So I was wondering how they can get a backlink from them.
Link Building | | Veptune
Do some writers sell those backlinks somewhere else, under the table? Are they in contact with SEO agencies who paid them and if this is the case, does their "manager" know it? or does the company directly have partnerships with SEO agencies? Basically, how to get a backlink from the NY Post or The Sun ? Thanks0 -
Best Blog Post Length to get Links
Okay, kind of silly question but i am looking for some help interpreting an analysis done by John Doherty almost a year ago: http://moz.com/blog/what-kind-of-content-gets-links-in-2012 In the document he mentions the correlation that longer posts on average receive more links but the graphs were really hard to interpret (for me). Based on the data what is the correct size we should shoot for (most graphs were missing labels). Any one have any insight? Should i shoot for 300 words per post, higher, etc? Thanks! Kyle
Link Building | | kchandler0 -
Is anybody else noticing a dramatic change to their 'links to your site' section in Google Webmaster Tools?
Hey,
Link Building | | ChrisHolgate
Over the last six months or so we've been going through our backlink profile and cleaning up links from poor quality sources. Week by week there have been small changes in our Google Webmaster Tools 'links to your site' section to reflect this. I logged on this morning however and there has been a dramatic shift in the information displayed. Pretty much every bad link has been removed from the list including sites I know for a fact are still linking to us as they didn't communicate at all to our removal requests. Additionally, rather than showing the top 1000 links to our site as it used to, WMT is only showing 73 linking domains. The remaining 73 domains are good natural links from high quality sources. I'm guessing Google are just in the middle of an update and that the remaining linking domains (including the bad ones) will reappear shortly. This isn’t a request for advice or help but I’m just curious as to whether anybody else is seeing anything similar?0 -
Google is no longer ranking home page but sub page lower, why?
We were ranking on page 2 and number 4 for the key word motorcycle tires. Google was ranking our home page jakewilson.com; however, we have been adding new content to our site and doing some internal linking. We pointed some links about motorcycle tires to http://www.jakewilson.com/cl/52/Motorcycle-Tires and now that page ranks but on page 3 not 2. Any thoughts?
Link Building | | DoRM0 -
Could google recognize urls in data-attributes?
Hi, could google's crawler recognize the following example as a link and will be crawl the url? any experience? ty for your help
Link Building | | censeo0 -
Is guest posting still a good idea?
Lately the changes in Google all revolve around reducing the power of "self made links". We've seen blog networks devalued and low quality directories devalued. We've also seen people penalized for unnatural patterns of anchor text. With all of this in mind, I'm wondering how much time I should be putting in to guest posting. It seems to me like the safest focus should be on creating great content and then promoting that content. But it's so much easier to spend a few minutes writing an article for someone else and getting an anchor texted link back to mine. To most, guest posting is still considered white hat. But really, when you look at it, you are providing a webmaster content in return for a link back to your site. But it is definitely not a natural vote for your website. It is really just a self made link. If I were Google, I think it would be quite easy to find ways to determine what is a guest post that was created simply to get a link back to a site. And then I would devalue the links from those posts. What do you think? Do you still do much guest posting?
Link Building | | MarieHaynes1 -
Google Plus Contest?
We have successfully used contests leveraging standard contest platforms to build a Facebook community. How could contests be used to increase Google Plus signals and engagement, and are there any best practices of others doing so?
Link Building | | sftravel0